Purdue graduate authors
unique book
 By
Megan Finnerty
Features Editor
Sometimes pints of Guinness turn into ugly bar
fights and hungover mornings; but this time they turned into an internationally
successful book.
Purdue graduate Jeff Holmes, 29, jokes that after
enough pints, he decided to team up with former Purdue professor Thierry
Kauffmann and write a short story about a new kind of heaven.
"Getting Even With Heaven" is a humorous novel
in which God is a young, aggressive CEO of HeavenonEarth.com.
Kauffmann, 42, a former physics professor, was
raised Catholic, but is not particularly religious.
"I wanted to explore new ways of looking at old
stuff like God and religion," he said. "I think the book looks at God
in a very human way, trying to have a more direct dialog with the spiritual
and bring him down to Earth to be with us so we can communicate with
him."
Holmes said the book is based around the question,
"What would happen if God wore a suit and had an affair with Eve? And
Eve broke up with Adam to go out with God, who then dumps her?"
"Getting Even with Heaven" was picked up by 1st
Books Library out of Bloomington, Ind., and released in late June. Since
then, it has sold thousands of copies around the world. "Getting Even"
can be found in the United Kingdom, Japan, Germany and France, Kauffmann's
home country.
In the book, Eve, the Bible's first woman, is Colleen,
owner of Heaven's Hole bar in Los Angeles. Colleen is interested in
Jeremy and Kevin, two barflies who are the opposite of one another.
To get even with heaven, or God, Colleen switches the men's guardian
angels to make them more appealing to her.
And the mayhem ensues.
Holmes has been writing since he can remember,
he finished his first book when he was 5, a Crayola and construction
paper masterpiece about an evil witch.
But in the years following that first easily penned
book, writing has not been so easy for Holmes.
In fact, he describes it as a constant struggle,
an internal battle waged with words, typewriters and money.
Holmes tried to abandon writing several times by
getting 9-to-5 jobs, because he was frustrated with the expense of sending
his work out, and with the rejections he would get in return.
He throws around words such as, "wreck my life,"
"starve" and "struggle" to describe his rise from unknown writer to
published author.
"I knew I would do this when I found out I just
wouldn't do anything else," he said.
But now that his first book is being published
and he is discussing book deals for several other works of poetry and
non-fiction, Holmes said a weight has lifted from his life.
This has made me a nicer person, because now I'm
not as bitter," he said. "I was on the frustrated side for so long,
but now I don't have that clouding my eyes anymore."
Kauffmann's journey to "Getting Even" was not so
tortured.
He started writing screenplays in '97 and always
thought about writing, but felt like that door was closed because he
chose a scientific career.
But when Holmes approached him with a rough draft
of the book, he saw it as the opportunity he'd been waiting for.
He would sit in coffee shops and bars, drinking
Coke, writing longhand and getting to know the characters.
"That was the best part of it, hearing them speak
and say things that I didn't expect them to say," he said. "It was always
dry and two-dimensional for several months, and then I had to find out
what was unique about them and develop a liking for them."
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